Explosive growth in Colorado's craft-brewing industry produces not only more beer, but more beer byproducts.

That means the hamburger you eat next week may come from a steer happily fed last week with brewing leftovers.

Using spent grains for livestock feed dates to the advent of beer. But with corn and other commodity prices sky high, feedyards increasingly are using brewing byproducts to help fatten cattle in preparation for slaughter.

"They say that Colorado is the Napa Valley of beer, and there are a lot of breweries here producing a lot of spent grain," said Joe Schiraldi, vice president of brewing operations for Boulder-based Left Hand Brewing.

Shipping processed barley to livestock feeders "really helps their economics," Schiraldi said. "It's a great way to direct that waste stream."

Some brewers give their spent mash away. Others receive about $5 to $10 per ton for the wet grains.

Either way, it must go. Craft brewers have little storage for used grain, and production bottlenecks quickly materialize without disposal.

Oskar Blues owner Dale Katechis sends a portion of the brewery's waste grain to his 50-acre Hops & Heifers Farm in Longmont, where a handful of cattle are raised and brewing hops are grown.

"We're trying to vertically integrate what we do with the brewery and the restaurants," said head brewer Dave Chichura.

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Several Front Range breweries contract with Ulrich Farms, a cattle-feeding operation near Platteville, to have spent grains hauled away.

Rex Beall, an Ulrich owner and manager, said the nonalcoholic, recycled grain constitutes about one-quarter of his cattle's feed. A third comes from corn, and the remainder is a mixture of hay and other agricultural byproducts.

"Today's market has changed so much because of corn prices," Beall said. "There is value to us in using the brewers' grains."

The process of beer brewing and ethanol production removes starches and sugars from barley and corn. The remaining spent grains have reduced caloric content but provide protein and fiber that can supplement corn for cattle feed.

Corn prices have more than doubled in the past six years. Much of the corn that formerly was used for livestock feed now is diverted to ethanol production. The increased demand has been a major cause of rising prices.

Colorado's largest feedyard, the JBS-owned Five Rivers Kuner lot near Greeley, uses dry distillers grain, the corn waste left over from ethanol production.

"We've been feeding it as a protein source for about five years, ever since the ethanol industry really got going," said general manager Nolan Stone.

MillerCoors did not respond to questions on how it deals with brewing waste from its Golden brewery, one of the largest in the world.

The relationship between brewers and feeders helps the economics on both sides, said Stephen Koontz, an agricultural economist at Colorado State University.

"The distiller or brewer has a lot of byproduct," he said. "Conveniently, cattle do well with this feed. So it is a good match."

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